


But That Was When I Ruled the World

by raven_aorla



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Coldplay, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-28
Updated: 2010-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 09:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Coldplay songfics. There is a homeless man who looks remarkably like Harold Saxon, who drums constantly and wears a cracked ring on one finger. He remembers ruling the world. Not much else. AU, spoilers for LotTL.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Viva la Vida

There are a few things he knows.

He knows he is in a city called Cardiff. He knows he mustn't take off the ring he wears, even though the jewel is cracked and he has the vague sensation that something didn't happen the way it was supposed to, and that it was connected to the ring. He knows that if he looks someone in the eye just the right way and tells them to give him their spare change, they will do it and look very nervous as they scuttle away.

There are many things he suspects. At some point, he believes he was very important. At some point, he held the fates of every being on this planet in the palm of his hand. But no one seems to be aware of that.

> I used to rule the world
> 
> Seas would rise when I gave the word
> 
> Now in the morning I sleep alone
> 
> Sweep the streets I used to own

He shouts at people as they walk by the bridge he sleeps under. The crowds make him angry. They don't pay attention, even when he screams that their world is puny and worthy of being crushed. They don't even look at him when he starts crying and talking in a language that makes perfect sense to him but no one else comprehends, to fill up an aching loneliness somewhere in his temples.

When someone laughs at him, he reaches into a ragged pocket of his stolen duffel coat as if to grab a weapon. There isn't a weapon. He can't remember where the reflex comes from. Even he is surprised at how eager he occasionally is to kill random strangers.

> I used to roll the dice
> 
> Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
> 
> Listen as the crowd would sing,
> 
> "Now the old king is dead!
> 
> Long live the king!"

He is torn between aching to recall his past and dreading that it might make his current state more pitiable. His impressions of glory and triumph, when they flash across his mind, make the rain colder and the disgust at human contact viler.

> One minute I held the key
> 
> Next, the walls were closed on me
> 
> And I discovered that my castles stand
> 
> Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

He looks up at the sky a lot, searching for something. Otherwise he hits the concrete walls with sticks to a beat that never varies. The beat in his head. He bangs out the rhythm even harder when someone tries to talk to him, particularly one fresh-faced reporter who buys his attention with liquor (he never manages to get as drunk as he wants, and he can't stand the cheap stuff).

"What is the point of this again?" he asks her, cradling the paper bag in his left arm and tapping a steel railing with two fingers on his right hand.

"I'm doing sort of a 'Weird News' report, something to amuse the readers – you look remarkably like Harold Saxon, the late former Prime Minister."

"Harold Saxon didn't exist," he replies quickly. It's something he's most unaccountably vehement about.

She gives him a charitable smile. "Now, don't get yourself worked up."

"He wasn't a person. Not a real person. A shadow. An illusion. And all you wretched apes couldn't see it." His voice rises as he speaks. So does the drumming.

"What is your name?" she asks him in soothing tones, trying to change the subject. She runs away when he howls incoherently and smashes the bottle on the pavement.

> It was the wicked and wild wind
> 
> Blew down the doors to let me in
> 
> Shattered windows and the sound of drums
> 
> People couldn't believe what I'd become

He is hauled into an asylum for paranoid schizophrenia, but is released when he proves, through a series of tests, that his IQ is genius-level and that he speaks at least forty languages. Though oddly, in his first test of lucidity, when asked what color grass is, he blurts out, "Red," before seeing their faces and correcting himself.

A nonprofit organization offers him a job. He throws it in their face and returns to his bridge.

> For some reason I can't explain
> 
> Once you go there was never
> 
> Never an honest word
> 
> But that was when I ruled the world

One night, very late, a man walks by who is wrong. He should not exist. The fact that this impossibility does exist, and is only a few feet away, makes him feel like his teeth are being ripped out, like his spine is trying to escape his body. He launches himself at the man even though the abomination has friends with him, even though he is only armed with a piece of glass, pummeling and slicing and shouting, "Freak! Freak! YOU SHOULD NOT BE!"

The friends pull him off but he won't stop screaming.

The man stands and stares at him. "Don't hurt him."

"He's insane," one of the friends, an attractive young man, says. The other friend is busy prying the bit of glass out of his hand.

The abomination looks at him more closely. "No. No he's not. Well, actually, he always has been, but in this case he's just being perceptive. Do you remember my name?"

"Get away from me." He grits his teeth when the man touches his face.

"Do you remember my name? I'll let go of you when you say it."

"Jack," he hisses.

"This guy knows you?" the other friend asks. "He looks like Harold Saxon."

"Yes. He's also supposed to be dead. He seems to have come back broken."

The younger one replies in surprise, "He is Harold Saxon? This is like Elvis or something."

Tired of his captive flailing around, the third man twists his arm behind his back so far that it would hurt to move. "So what are we doing with him?"

"Well, he's an alien, so he's our jurisdiction."

"We elected an alien?" they chorus.

The drums grow louder and louder. "I'm not going anywhere with you!"

Jack grins. "This may be petty of me, but I'm very pleased to finally get to do this." And he knocks him out.

> Revolutionaries wait
> 
> For my head on a silver plate
> 
> Just a puppet on a lonely string
> 
> Oh who would ever want to be king?

He can't move. He's shackled to a bed with hospital restraints. They're talking about him – or, rather, Jack is talking, and the others are asking questions.

"He hypnotized the world into electing him. He was trying to take control of the Earth. I helped stop him – he sent the rest of you to the Himalayas so you wouldn't be there to help me. Then his wife shot him."

A female voice now. "Why did he react that way to you?"

"You know how I can't die? He's from a species that have an extra sense to perceive time. My condition upsets that sense in a big way."

"How is he alive?" It's the attractive young man again.

"A friend of mine told me that his species can embed their personality and consciousness in a watch. I think he did something similar with the ring he's wearing. He wore it constantly before. It's broken, though. His mind came back altered – for which I am very grateful."

"This species is…"

Jack sighs. "Time Lords. He is the only other one."

"You mean…"

"Yes. He was once best friends with the Doctor, and it was the Doctor that defeated him."

"Who's the Doctor?" the young man asks.

"He's officially classified as an enemy of Torchwood, but since the Battle of Canary Wharf he's pretty much been considered neutral," someone else says.

"And Jack's got a crush on him," opines a caustic male voice.

"I can hear you quite clearly," the 'patient' calls out. Jack flings open the door and enters the room. After some argumentative whispering he shuts the door behind him, leaving the rest of his team out.

"How much do you remember?" he asks, taking a seat by the bed.

"I ruled the world. At some point. Somehow. Every time I look at you, I get the urge to kill you. Do you know why the drums follow me?" He's even tapping his fingers on the edge of the bed.

"Yeah, I do. And I can understand the urge to kill me. You were practically addicted to it."

That doesn't make sense. Or maybe it does. The thought makes his skull itch. "You're so horrible. You should be erased."

Jack is good at pretending the comment doesn't hurt. Not good enough. "I've contacted the Doctor. He should be here soon."

"I don't know any Doctor. And I'm a Time Lord?"

"What time is it?"

"9:34 AM and twenty-five seconds," he says automatically.

"Also you've got two hearts. Pretty clear indicator. I guess you don't remember your name."

"No."

"I got kinda sick of saying it, so I'll let the Doctor sort that out."

An odd, yet eminently familiar, grinding noise suffuses the room. A blue box materializes before him and a tall, thin, youngish man with brown hair steps out. Their eyes meet. The hollowness in his temple is filled and it's the loveliest sensation in the world.

The other one speaks first. "Koschei?"

A long-forgotten word springs to his lips. "Theta?"

Then Theta runs to him and nearly crushes him in his arms, kissing his lips, hair, nose, cheeks, and neck. "Koschei. You're back. I've got you. You're back. You're back. I'm not alone. You're back." He's weeping.

"You think you can get him off my planet for me?" Jack asks, brightly. It annoys Koschei – he has a name now – that Jack's tone should be so familiar with Theta.

Theta leaps off the bed and gives Jack a hug. "Thank you for finding him and not hurting him. You don't know what this means to me."

"I think I can hazard a guess. Good luck on fixing him."

"Oh, I'm a new man." His grin is almost idiotic in its enthusiasm, which makes him adorable beyond words.

"So…um…are those your real names, then?"

"Childhood nicknames until we chose our titles. We hardly ever used our real ones."

"Theta, why are you friends with him?" Koschei asks, petulant.

"I don't think either of you understands what I see in the other." Theta starts unfastening his wrists. "Come along. I'm taking you home."

"Is the grass red?"

"I'm afraid not any longer, but a ship is better than nothing. Don't look at Jack like that. You're not allowed to hurt anyone again."

"Just don't leave me."

Theta waves goodbye to the freak and pulls him into the blue box. Which is bigger on the inside, and not a surprise at all.

And then the world, though still confusing and full of gaps, is all right.

> I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
> 
> Roman cavalry choirs are singing
> 
> Be my mirror, my sword and shield
> 
> My missionaries in a foreign field
> 
> For some reason I can't explain,
> 
> I know St. Peter won't call my name
> 
> Never an honest word…
> 
> (But that was when I ruled the world.)


	2. The Scientist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Assessing the damage, much hurt/comfort.

He is not really Koschei – that man died centuries ago – but he is not the Master either, and the other name seems a bit more appropriate. He is not in a crisp suit with a gleam of power-lust in his eye. He wears torn black jeans encrusted with mud, a black duffel coat too large for him, and black fingerless gloves that are an oddly sweet note, like those belonging to a gentle hobo from the Great Depression or a production of Rent. His hair is matted with grime and he looks more tired than anything.

This battered Time Lord preferably thought of as Koschei reaches for the console. "I know this," he says slowly.

The Doctor gently takes his hand to prevent him from touching it. "It'll burn you. I set it so that I have to explicitly authorize another pilot."

"Did someone steal it?" His brows furrow. "Oh. I think I did. Why did I do that?"

The cracked ring on Koschei's finger catches the light. The Doctor wonders how bad a job human technology did resurrecting what was left of the Master's consciousness and form. First, though, Koschei needs a shower and a change of clothes.

"You did a lot of things. It doesn't matter now," the Doctor says, lightly he hopes. Now that the initial rush of seeing his friend alive, at least in some fashion, has ended, a new kind of sadness is creeping in.

> Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry,
> 
> You don't know how lovely you are.
> 
> I had to find you, tell you I need you,
> 
> Tell you I set you apart.

When the Doctor takes Kochei's coat, he breathes in sharply. His charge's forearms are covered in cuts, smoothly curved ones in deep vermillion scabs (humans scab brown, Time Lords scab red) that are clearly Gallifreyan sentences. They say, roughly, "Gallifrey is lost. So am I. Lost forever. The drums are my only companion."

"Why did you do this?" he asks, running his fingers along the macabre writing. Each circle is perfectly round, each whirl impeccable, meaning that incredible focus was required to carve it with a knife.

Koschei, now in a grey undershirt that reveals how thin he has become, stares at his arms. "I don't recall."

"Can you read it?"

"Yes. The bathroom is to the second right, you say? Do you have clothes?"

"I'll go to the wardrobe and get you some. You should wash up. I'll take a look at you in the med bay afterwards." He knows he needs to go inside Koschei's mind. See what the damage is. Though this has made him more manageable (he hates himself for thinking the word "tame"), the Doctor does not relish the thought of seeing the wreck of a once-fine mind, no matter how twisted it had been.

Koschei gives him half a smile and kisses him on the cheek. "Thank you."

> Tell me your secrets and ask me your questions,
> 
> Oh let's go back to the start…
> 
> Running in circles, coming in tails,
> 
> Heads on a science apart.

Koschei showers for nearly an hour. How long has it been since he last took such an opportunity? The Doctor sits by the door with neatly folded black silk pajamas in his lap. Koschei should be comfortable.

They are hanging safely in the Vortex, and the Doctor decides he won't answer any distress calls for at least a month, no matter how urgent. Unless they're from Martha or Jack. He owes them that, especially Jack, who could have easily killed his former tormentor in revenge or kept him locked up, away from the Doctor. He doesn't deserve that unfortunate immortal's devotion. He is grateful for it all the same.

He is good with cosmic responsibility but has again and again failed at personal responsibility. This needs to end.

He finds himself stroking at the silk as he thinks.

On the one hand, Koschei's state may allow the Doctor time away from the TARDIS, accomplishing his customary feats of derring-do. He is unlikely to attempt world conquest again, no matter how misanthropic he remains to everyone but the Doctor, whom he seems to have imprinted on. On the other hand, if Koschei is injuring himself, some things in his head are even more wrong than they look, and the Doctor may need a long time to sort it all out.

Eventually Koschei opens the door a crack and peeks out. He is wrapped in a towel. "Clothes?"

The Doctor hands him the bundle. "Should be your size."

"All right."

> I was just guessing at numbers and figures,
> 
> Pulling the puzzles apart -
> 
> Questions of science, science and progress
> 
> Do not speak as loud as my heart(s).

Shortly after, the Doctor is running a series of tests on his much-altered old friend and lover. Koschei does look a good deal more relaxed now that he's clean. The results show that he is suffering from nutritional deficiency, incipient pneumonia, and head lice.

"I am going to examine your mind," he says to Koschei, who is half-lying, half-sitting on the bed with the blanket he requested wrapped around him. "It won't hurt. If there is anything you don't want me to see…"

"You can see everything." He sounds disconnected and dreamy. "I'm glad you're here, Theta. You'll stop the drums."

"I hope to, eventually. Right now you need to rest." The Doctor chokes back the lump in his throat and places his fingers on Koschei's temples.

> And tell me you love me, come back and haunt me
> 
> Oh, and I rush to the start;
> 
> Running in circles, chasing at tails
> 
> Coming back as we are.

It's like walking in a gutted building. The only other Time Lord is still a genius, but one without purpose or impulse control, without many of his layers of self. Though not exactly lobotomized, the haphazard resurrection has rendered him a troubled adolescent again in capacity, with only the sound of drums knitting the fragments together.

And everywhere the Doctor goes he finds himself reflected back. At some deep, primordial level, Koschei sees his Theta as the only real person in a world of shadows he holds in contempt. The longing for Theta flows through his consciousness like a breeze stirring life into stagnancy.

The greatest pang comes when the Doctor discovers this: said feeling was part of the Master too, but was buried so deep under megalomania that it had warped into rivalry and sadism. It took breaking his psyche for anything like love to surface.

When he emerges, the Doctor realizes he's kissing Koschei. He makes a mental note to do something about that lice later, because a mutual infection would be embarrassing and unromantic, but for right now they cling like their lives depend on it. Which they do.

> Nobody said it was easy
> 
> Oh, it's such a shame for us to part
> 
> Nobody said it was easy
> 
> No one ever said it would be this hard
> 
> I'm going back to the start.


	3. Clocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uneasiness and wanting.

The next two weeks aboard the TARDIS are calm and quiet, if inevitably disconnected. Koschei sometimes loses track of what Theta is saying because there are math problems playing in his head or a flash of memory is distracting him.

Theta is gentle. One of the first things he does is wash Koschei's hair in a bath of olive oil, to drown the lice, and he goes after each one with a comb and his fingers. "Humans in this era usually employ chemical remedies, but you and I would be allergic to them," he murmurs. "Sometimes low tech works better."

"Feels a bit ape-like," Koschei says. This does not mean it bothers him. There is something soothing about it.

"The alternative would be to shave your head. I'd rather not."

"I…I like it when you touch me." Out of the corner of his eye he sees the center of his broken universe blush. He feels both pleased and frustrated. They haven't gone beyond kisses, at least not since he woke up incomplete, and the ache is almost as bad as the nightmares.

> The lights go out and I can't be saved
> 
> Tides that I tried to swim against
> 
> Have brought me down upon my knees
> 
> Oh I beg, I beg and plead, singing…

Theta looks in his head every day, usually after dinner. The drums are quieter afterwards. They always return by morning. He tries to avoid them by swimming ferocious laps in the pool, listening to very loud music in his room, or sometimes even writing treatises on various planets he knows everything about except why he knows them at all.

He doesn't mean to hurt himself. Really, he doesn't. It's just that when he's busy thinking about how much he hungers for contact– and the steadiness in his temple, that little island of completeness, to grow through his body, with fire to burn his ashes into life and an end to yearning, letting him fight inner turmoil with the soothing eye of the Oncoming Storm – he realizes he's been banging his skull to a four-four drumbeat against the wall and he is bloody and dizzy.

"I'm sorry," he says when he finds Theta, who is busy reading some kind of medical text. In Gallifreyan. "I didn't mean to do it."

Theta looks up at Koschei, orange-red blood seeping through his hair and trickling down his face. He opens his mouth and no sound comes out.

> Come out of things unsaid
> 
> Shoot an apple off my head
> 
> And a trouble that can't be named
> 
> A tiger's waiting to be tamed, singing…

To his credit, Theta does not start shouting at him until Koschei is safely sewn back up, bandaged, checked for concussion, and lightly anesthetized.

"Are you in pain?" he asks, his dark brown eyes narrowing.

"No."

That's when he gets loud, running his hands through his hair and stalking back and forth amongst the medical equipment. He talks very fast and switching back and forth from English to their native language.

"Then will you tell me what the Hell you were doing? For the past three hundred or so years you have been leading me on a merry chase all throughout the universe and time and space, committing crimes and killing and forcing your will upon people, with me running after you and cleaning up your messes, and you even ran away from the Time War when you could have helped me! I might have still had to pull the trigger and destroy Gallifrey, but you could have been there, and you could have - I don't know - you could have shared the guilt. Except you wouldn't have felt guilty, would you, Mr. Sociopath Par Excellence, you probably would have relished the power we had, and maybe that would have felt wrong too, but at least I would have known you were alive, you selfish bastard. All that time you hid from me, the ultimate warrior being the ultimate coward, and I the pacifist had to do the dirty work you fled from. Then you hurt my friends and nearly ruined the closest thing to a home planet I could have and turned my TARDIS into a grotesque parody of itself. Then you just wouldn't listen to me when I needed you so much but you were trying so hard to be my Master that you let any other feelings turn into the sickening show of cruelty and spite!"

Then he stops pacing and looms over the bed. He is quiet once more. "And I forgave it all."

> Confusion never stops
> 
> Closing walls and ticking clocks
> 
> Gonna come back and take you home
> 
> I could not stop - that you now know, singing…

"I did do a great deal of things, didn't I?" Koschei murmurs, reaching for a cupful of water but missing it by centimeters.

"I forgave you for all of those. I haven't forgiven you for dying." Theta holds the cup to Kochei's lips.

"I died?"

He laughs without anything resembling humor. "When you were…when you were…"

"The Master. I was the Master and you were the Doctor." These words are true, but they have little meaning.

"I'm still the Doctor."

"Not to me."

A drop falls from the corner of Koschei's mouth from his drink, lying supine as he is. He tries to sit up. Theta lightly touches his chest to hold him in place and dabs at the streak himself. "You should stay still for a few hours at least."

Koschei accepts this and closes his eyes. "As you were scolding…"

"Right. I offered you a place on this ship. Well, you would have had to be my prisoner. You were too dangerous elsewhere. But I stopped one of the people you wronged from shooting you. I didn't stop one of the others in time."

"That freak said my wife shot me."

"Yeah, and I would prefer it if you called him Captain Jack."

Koschei ignores this. "I can't believe I had a wife. A human wife, too."

"I was dubious myself. She seemed more of a beard - I mean a pet - than anything." His eyes stare off into the distance and he unconsciously takes Koschei's hand.

The words hurt Koschei. As Theta talks he concentrates on how beautiful he is, slender and quick with erratic hair and elfin features. "But I begged you to regenerate. In front of my friends who you almost destroyed, and they saw me sob with you in my arms, screaming for you. They were good enough to at least pretend to understand. And now…now that I know you had a plan all along, I am deeply hurt that you would rather entrust your very self to haphazard human technology, no matter how much you could have tinkered with it, rather than stay with the one person who wanted you better rather than dead."

> Come out upon my seas
> 
> Cursed missed opportunities
> 
> Am I part of the cure,
> 
> Or am I part of the disease?
> 
> Singing…

"You are what I want," Koschei says. "I don't care what I was like before."

Theta realizes he is holding his hand and moves to let go. Koschei clamps on. "You've had a head injury."

"You've been in my mind. You know that's why I was banging it in the first place. I want you. And now I see that's how you're punishing me."

With a look of horror, Theta cries, "No! No! It's not punishment! I…I can't take advantage of you." He tugs at his hand some more, not wanting to hurt his patient but looking embarrassed.

Koschei grabs the other hand too and starts kissing them. "I'm not an imbecile or a child. I need you in order to get better. As you said, you're the only person who wants me well rather than dead."

"I…I…"

"You're the only light in a world of shadows. Nothing else compares."

Now he just looks frightened. "I mustn't…"

"Be happy for once, will you?" Odd how his weakness is a position of strength. He keeps Theta's sparrow hands in one of his, and pulls him in by the necktie. "Come on, Theta. Take me home."

Theta doesn't dare move him yet. He does take off his jacket and curl up beside Koschei, their hands together, their legs entwined, the drums slowly fading.


	4. Fix You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a decision is made, and loneliness is eased if not solved.

They hold one another like they are drowning. They are slow and quiet. The Doctor spends much of his time banishing feelings of guilt, as if what they both desperately want is wrong because it might make him happy.

Koschei breaks the low susurrus of sighs and moans to say, "I don't mind if you hurt me, Theta."

The Doctor kisses the nape of his neck and says, "But I do."

They do not talk again that night. At their climaxes they gasp but don't speak a single word. Koschei falls asleep almost immediately, curled against the Doctor with a trusting hand on his chest.

> When you try your best but you don't succeed
> 
> When you get what you want, but not what you need
> 
> When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
> 
> Stuck in reverse…

The Doctor has made love for the first time since the Time War. Now he lies awake, thinking.

Not that he never actually had a form of sexual intercourse in the intervening time – that one night with Madame du Pompadour was brilliant fun, if tinged with sadness in retrospect; and to never even give Captain Jack a quick shag would have been a waste of potential on both sides.

Never Rose, though. He wouldn't have been able to give her what she deserved.

This isn't about what anyone deserved. It's about what one needs to end his loneliness, and the other needs to justify his existence, now that he is a mere shadow of a person.

His skin is entirely too smooth and fair for someone salvaged from the ashes, his hair too soft, the gentle hiss of his breathing too real.

> And the tears come streaming down your face
> 
> When you lose something you can't replace
> 
> When you love someone but it goes to waste
> 
> Could it be worse?

The Doctor has learned to surround pain with high walls, keeping himself safe and reasonably cheerful. Otherwise the few billion voices of his lost people would have deafened him long ago. For a moment, though, when he lit that pyre, it was as if they were all weeping with them for the double loss. A friend to an enemy. An enemy to death.

Lying here like this in a heap of limbs and exhaustion, the grief and anger melts away, and he doesn't want to move a single muscle until his bedmate does.

Twitching doesn't count, though. Koschei appears to be having a nightmare, eyes darting. The Doctor smooths his hair and whispers, "I forgive you," into his ear.

> Lights will guide you home
> 
> And ignite your bones
> 
> And I will try to fix you

Koschei has been getting better over the weeks. He no longer self-injures. Much. He generally goes to the Doctor before he starts, and asks to be restrained before the temptation becomes too great. He does lose his trail of thought, though, and the Doctor will find him sitting in a chair or leaning against a wall, staring and confused.

At one point the Doctor bit the bullet and landed the TARDIS in Martha's room, begging her to help him obtain some psychiatric medication so Koschei would stop waking up in the middle of the night shouting, "DRUMS! DRUMS! DRUMS! DRUMS!"

She was first aghast at the Master being in her house, but a few minutes' conversation with Koschei and she realized this was not the same person at all. The Doctor knows he doesn't deserve her, either.

> And high up above or down below
> 
> When you're too in love to let it go
> 
> But if you never try you'll never know
> 
> Just watch your worth

Sometimes he misses being able to go on adventures whenever he feels like it. He answered one distress call since picking up Koschei. When he returned, having been gone for a mere five hours, he discovered Koschei had been peeling the paint off a room with fingernails that were now torn to the nubs. It wasn't actually causing him pain but it was such a pitiful sight that the Doctor decided to make himself unavailable to the outside world for the foreseeable future.

> Tears stream down your face
> 
> When you lose something you cannot replace
> 
> Tears stream down your face
> 
> And I…
> 
> Tears stream down your face
> 
> I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
> 
> Tears stream down your face
> 
> And I…

They occupy themselves with chess – though Koschei has to be reminded when it's his turn – reading, exercise, films from the Doctor's vast collection, and the Doctor trying to repair what he can of Koschei's mind. He meanders about the ship performing bits of maintenance as Koschei pesters him for stories about the Doctor's exploits.

He doesn't want to hear about the ones involving the Master, though. Or Captain Jack.

His life lacks some of its color, now. But it also lacks a good deal of its ache.

With that thought, the Doctor snuggles closer to the incomplete completion he is so grateful to have, and falls asleep.

> Lights will guide you home
> 
> And ignite your bones
> 
> And I will try to fix you.


End file.
